As I hold the experience of "focusing" in my mind, I feel a light, expansive rising in my chest that pleases
me. It is a soft, feather-like feeling resting, no..., rising from my chest. Ah yes, the rising. Focusing is a "rising
above" of sorts for me by going within.

I feel a cool pleasure right in the center of my chest, an opening in my throat that comes with a swelling of joy that
feels like tears. I am grateful for the opening that focusing has given me, the space to express myself with a safe other.

I hold "safe other" now in my mind, for focusing involves a partnership of trading turns listening and focusing
with a trained focusing partner.

I see loving eyes accepting me, understanding, accompanying me. I feel excitement, again in my chest. The excitement of
being listened to, and the healing this brings. I say "Yes" in my being, remembering the grateful, happy feeling
of my "yes, yes" when I hear my partner reflect back to me what I say. This reflection. My mirror of myself.

Holding/healing/accepting. Holding my self and being held by another. Accepting myself and being accepted by another.

But now, I feel a stone, an unpleasant black stone, shaped perhaps like an arrowhead, ah yes,

arrowhead....

holding....

a wound....

a wound that has turned into a black arrowhead in my throat,

yes,
(and with this a lot of "stuff" comes about attack and sharp tongues and hard edges....and...silence...a flood
of many things I could follow in the session, but I stay with my throat...and...)

a release there in the throat

and an image

of a partner blowing breath into it to turn it into a live coal! Yes,

breathing life into it.
Now it is warm and red and alive with inner heat, this in my throat,

and my throat feels VERY OPEN now.

Deep breath.

My head is nodding in a deep yes, receiving the ALL THIS
of focusing and focusing partnership.

I have insight now, into this moment's felt experience of focusing. I see that focusing enables me to rise above my daily
problems by going within, and it heals my wounds with the loving breath of another, my partner. The "sharp wound"
in my throat was transformed into an open aliveness. I have both gotten an insight and felt better, easier inside.

I know more will come spontaneously later with all of this, after only three minutes of focusing.

This, then, is focusing.

It is a practice of going within and WAITING. Waiting for a "felt sense" to form somewhere in the body that
comes forth from the issue/problem/situation that one has chosen to focus on. By being with and relating to this felt sense,
the body shifts, releases, changes in the way it was "holding" the issue, and insight and a feeling of lightness
may arise.

It is a journey into your undiscovered inner knowing.

You may enter images, felt movements, strong physical sensations, metaphors, sounds, etc. -- all "handles" or
symbols for your deeper felt experience. As these "open", you know MORE. You feel good. It is often quite fascinating
and usually very surprising.

It definitely is hard to explain.

One must do it to know it.
And keep doing it to know it better.

Why do it?

Because of the shift. The release. The forward movement in one's life that naturally unfolds from this gentle attention
one gives to oneself. It feels good!

This "Presence" to our deeper knowing leads us to our wisdom and our joy. We start changing. WE begin feeling
real and grounded and more connected to our True selves and to greater things.

"Yet, in the end, perhaps there are just two kinds of way to live a human life: on the one hand, the imitative or prefabricated
way, which clings to the husk of ritual, and is driven by fear and submission; on the other hand, the human way, which comes
to each thing freshly, with curiosity and an open heart.The human way is forever green and fertile." (Rob Foxcroft --
www.robfoxcroft.com)